In conclusion & a few random photos

It's Thanksgiving weekend now and we've been reflecting on all that there is to be thankful for, including this wonderful trip we had together! So before the cobwebs start collecting it's time I finished off this blog... Kevin typed up his journal (all 40 plus pages of it) and I've been reading and remembering. The trip was special in many ways but a couple things stand out.

The first is how many times I heard Indians say, "But I'm an Indian first!" when the subject of their religion/background came up. One perfect example of this was our guide Shafi. Even though he was a Muslim, he took time and effort to help a Hindu family -- and in particular, their small son, calling him 'beta', an endearment -- find a small dark shrine tucked away between the walls of the Ranthambore Fort. It was a place so small and dark that we had to duck our heads, walk single-file and use the light of a borrowed cell phone in order to see the marigold-covered shiv-lingam inside. Shafi was a man who was at peace with not only himself, but his neighbors.

Another example of this attitude was our last night in India, when we were invited to have dinner with the daughter of the Sikh man (recently deceased) whose travel agency we used and who was a friend and business associate of both of our fathers when they lived and worked in India. When we were saying goodbye she said, "I never asked you about your family!" I mentioned how blessed we felt to have two wonderful sons, their wives and children living close to us, she said, "You're right. It is a blessing. Oh, we never got to read the Bible together. Next time you come, we'll read the Bible together, OK?" This from a very modern agnostic Indian woman who described her father as the 'only God I ever knew' and who had just opened her home to two people she'd never met before, but respected because our fathers knew each other way back when.

The second is how this trip had the effect of Giving to us in three unexpected ways: it gave Kevin back his love for India; it gave me back my India-loving husband; and it gave us both time and opportunity to realize how much we love and need each other still, even after 35 years of marriage and a few crises along the way.

Kevin's excited about returning to northeast India in February to work with Operation Smile. He said he wants to give back something to the country that has given him so much.

And now we're tentatively planning (talking around the edges of) our next trip to India which hopefully be in the south. I'm very interested in exploring the Jewish community in Cochin and traveling its beautiful backwaters.

But Africa is also beckoning...

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The photographs are a random collection, the first five of which are of Thailand.

The red letter box was nailed to one of the inner walls of the Bom Jesus Cathedral in Goa.

The colored glass wall was at the new heritage hotel in Jaipur.

The seventh photo from the bottom is at a factory in Jaipur where we did a little cloth shopping and were served some excellent chai.

The picture of the sunset over the lake and the one above it of the huge tree in the field were taken in Sawai Madhopur when Shafi took us bird watching and we came away with that indescribable sense of peace and well-being that is such a part of Indian evenings. I miss the evenings the most: the smell of dust and wood smoke from cooking fires that starts to fill the air, and the sound of the parakeets, cormorants, martins, cranes and doves flying from tree to tree to find their roosts.